I’m cooking string beans tonight. I like to add a little bit of bacon bits, chopped onion and chicken broth for extra flavor but green beans are pretty easy to whip up. The green beans of today are much easier than those of my youth because they are so much less stringy. Farmers have developed new breeds over the years to give consumers what they want and the predominant Blue Lake variety of green beans was developed right here in northern California’s Lake County. I’m proud of my recipe but that said, my green beans don’t taste anywhere near as good as the ones my mother made in South Carolina a half century ago.
Green beans is the predominant term these days because the strings have all but disappeared. I used to snap on both ends while preparing the beans but now I just snap at the stem end and there’s often not much to worry about when it comes to string.
By now you’re probably asking: “What does all this have to do with bluegrass music?”. Well, I’ll tell you. String Bean Akeman was Bill Monroe’s banjoist just before Earl Scruggs arrived and solidified the sound that bluegrass music would take into the second half of the century.
David Akeman fit his nickname perfectly. He was tall and thin and probably had that wiry stringy strength that people admire. He was a very good baseball player and Bill Monroe probably valued that skill a lot as he barn stormed local towns with his band, challenging them to baseball contests as his stevedores set up the tents for the next day’s performance.
But String Bean Akeman was not only a good baseball player. He was a really good claw hammer style banjo picker. He was a Grand Old Opry star in his own right and ranked with banjoists like Uncle Dave Macon, Ralph Stanley and Grandpa Jones at the top of the heap in that realm on WSM in Nashville. And he was funny. His humor ranked among the top at the Grand Old Opry. People needed that touch as a pause during the great music that was happening.
String Bean had a successful career but he still lived a relatively simple life with his wife Estelle. It was rumored that he distrusted banks and kept lots of cash on his person. That rumor led to tragedy and he and his wife were murdered as a result. I’ll let Sam Bush tell the story:
https://youtu.be/43Er1Pu37us?si=1j46zooj_L6_C5YM
My string beans tasted really good tonight but I wish the story of David Akeman had had a happier outcome. I think about certain people when I make certain foods and String Bean is certainly one of those people. Hee Haw is still in reruns and if you watch enough old TV you will no doubt see him. A festival still exists in his honor (a week after Grass Valley if you’re interested).
https://stringbeanpark.com/home
The festival has been running for 27 years now. If it had initiated when String Bean died in 1973 it would have been older than our own CBA Father’s Day Festival. I hope to see you at our 49th annual festival in Grass Valley for Father’s Day to celebrate our 50th year as an organization supporting bluegrass music.
